Improvement on Net Recovery of Slabs for Aluminium 5052 and 8150 Alloys

Abstract

In response to increasingly demanding market conditions within the aluminium industry, the drive to reduce cost and increase productivity is an on-going challenge. This has been largely due to testing economic conditions globally and continued consolidation within the industry. Inevitably there is an increased focus on internal production costs with the associated drives to reduce scrap, increase productivity and to do both at a lower operating cost. The quality of a foundry industry can be increased by minimizing the casting defects during production. Aim of the current study is to study the production line of an aluminium alloy manufacturing industry and to improve the quality of production using quality control tools. The slabs produced faces various defects and net recovery of these slabs can be improved by Quality control tools. This study shows the systematic approach to find the root cause of major defects in aluminium castings using defect diagnostic approach as well as cause and effect diagram. Casting defect analysis is carried out using techniques like historical data analysis, cause-effect diagrams, design of experiments and root cause analysis. Using check sheets data has been collected and all the defects have been studied. Using Pareto chart major defects in the aluminium castings were noted. The major defects for the rejections during production were identified as hot tear, inclusions, cold shut and cracks. Each defect is studied thoroughly and the possible causes for the defects are shown in Cause and Effect Diagrams.